


Weasley Is Our King

by lytefoot



Series: Oops! My finger slipped. [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Gen, M/M, Minor canon divergence, Quidditch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 15:46:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16895478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lytefoot/pseuds/lytefoot
Summary: A short drabble in which Harry and Hermione stay for the last quidditch match of the season in Order of the Phoenix, and Harry gets to see his best friend's moment in the sun.





	Weasley Is Our King

**Author's Note:**

> What if Hagrid hadn't dragged Harry and Hermione away from Ron's quidditch triumph?
> 
> Immediately follows these paragraphs from OotP (p. 684 in the US trade paperback)
>
>> “And they’re off!” said Lee. “And Davies takes the Quaffle immediately, Ravenclaw Captain Davies with the Quaffle, he dodges Johnson, he dodges Bell, he dodges Spinnet as well… He’s going straight for goal! He’s going to shoot — and — and —” Lee swore very loudly. “And he’s scored.”
>> 
>> Harry and Hermione groaned with the rest of the Gryffindors. Predictably, horribly, the Slytherins on the other side of the stands began to sing:
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> _Weasley cannot save a thing,  
>  He cannot block a single ring . . ._  
> 

Harry wanted to cover his ears. He couldn’t watch, but he couldn’t look away either, as Katie lost the Quaffle to Bradley, who charged back up the pitch, going for the left hoop, and Ron lunged to the right. Harry very nearly groaned—until he saw too late what Ron had seen in the nick of time, the shift in Bradley’s direction to shoot into the right hoop and directly into Ron’s hands. Harry barely had time to register the save before he was on his feet, screaming, but half of Gryffindor was on their feet with him; the other half hadn’t had a chance to register what had happened before Alicia was charging toward the other end of the pitch.

Never before had Harry paid such careful attention to the scoring portion of a Quidditch match. He played a Seeker’s game, his only real concern for the score being a strategic one: if he caught the snitch now, would they win on points? Would they win on points by enough to put them ahead in the Cup? He’d always thought the Keeper’s job was somehow the opposite, no strategy at all, just save whatever they throw at you, but watching Ron watch the movement of the Quaffle up and down the field, he understood some of how wrong he was.

The Keeper’s job was to read the ebb and flow of the Chasers, to see who would feint and who would shoot straight, to take calculated risks, and Harry understood for the first time why it was Ron’s position. The boy who spun himself upside down on his broom in a last-second lunge for the bottom ring, who saw that the Quaffle was going to be passed clear to the other side of the field before it came at him, this was _Harry’s_ Ron Weasley. The Ron who kept his head in a crisis and thought three moves ahead of everyone else. Harry had seen this side of Ron before, but most of the school hadn’t had the privilege, which explained the undercurrent of surprise in some of the screams in the Gryffindor stands. Harry wasn’t surprised; rather he was thrilled that finally, finally Ron was showing them all what he could do.

Harry had never had the opportunity before to really watch Ron in action. He’d always had his own business to attend to. Now, though, he watched the look of intense concentration of Ron’s face with deep pride and something a little more than pride. He watched the way Ron moved, strong and decisive and as the match went on increasingly confident. When he lunged up to his full height on his broom, both arms outstretched, to catch a Quaffle that was coming in high, Harry was too stunned at the sheer poetry of motion to even notice who it was who first shouted, “Weasley can save anything!” in the stands.

It was definitely Dean, though, who came up with the next line to “Weasley Is Our King” as Chambers was lining up for a penalty shot; you could always count on Dean Thomas to come through with a rhyme in a pinch. After Ron had dropped straight down seven feet and directly into the path of Chambers’s carefully aimed Quaffle, Harry tore his eyes away from Ron’s grin long enough to glance up the pitch to where Malfoy sat behind Umbridge, looking as if he’d bitten into an entire lemon.

The next time the Gryffindor stands erupted into screams, Harry didn’t know for a moment what had happened. He’d been so enthralled with watching Ron’s serious study of the pitch that he hadn’t paid any particular attention to the rest of the game, had apparently missed a particularly spectacular capture of the snitch by Ginny. Even with an impressive catch, though, when the score was 380 to 10, it was obvious who the star player of the match had been.

Harry rushed down the stands with the rest of Gryffindor, elbowing his way to the front of the crowd as it charged the pitch: he needed to get to Ron before he had too much of a crowd around him. Something sour and aching at the pit of his stomach had untied itself, and Harry knew very little except that he had to get to Ron, to congratulate him, to…

To lunge at his neck, and hug him tight, and kiss him full on the mouth, as it turned out. It was impossible not to, between the grin of triumph on Ron’s face, the roar of the crowd around them, and the swell of joy and pride that threatened to make Harry’s heart explode. At another moment, Harry might have been worried about the reaction he might get, from Ron, from the entire school watching. Ron’s eyes went wide for a moment, and then his arms went tight around Harry’s waist and he returned the kiss, mouth warm and firm and confident, not crying even slightly. As for the crowd, a few of the Gryffindors were staring, Lavender Brown looking somewhat disgruntled; Cho turned away and stormed off the field; and Ginny nudged an elbow into Hermione, who stopped staring and handed Ginny a sickle. Harry let Ron go after a moment, dropping back down onto his feet, and they stared at each other briefly, before Ron put a hand on the side of his jaw, tipped his face up, and kissed him briefly, softly, and then the rest of the team was on them. Harry seriously considered not letting them carry Ron away, but Ron absolutely deserved this triumph, and there was the entire party in the common room to look forward to.


End file.
